North Park Clean and Safe: Good for Business, Bad for Residents?

As San Diego’s budget deficit has grown, the list of basic services that the City provides has shrunk. To address the increased number of overgrown trees, trash-strewn sidewalks, and rundown business centers, dozens of communities throughout San Diego have formed maintenance assessment districts and business improvement districts.

But in North Park, some business leaders believe that the maintenance assessment district created in 1998 isn’t effective enough. And the business improvement district, created in 1996, is not allowed to spend money on maintaining residential areas.

North Park Main Street’s Liz Studebaker: “The lack of maintenance is noticeable to residents, business owners, and patrons.”

Image by Alan Decker

“We have empty storefronts, crumbling infrastructure, litter and graffiti problems,” writes Liz Studebaker, executive director of the North Park Main Street, the nonprofit that manages North Park’s business improvement district. “The lack of maintenance in North Park is noticeable to residents, business owners, and patrons.”

Last year, North Park Main Street began lobbying for a new maintenance assessment district. The idea was to form the North Park Clean and Safe Overlay Maintenance Assessment District, similar to overlay districts in Little Italy and Downtown. It is called an overlay district because it would be contained within the existing maintenance assessment district.

Staff at the Park and Recreation Department —which oversees the City’s maintenance assessment districts — agreed, and in late May, the City mailed ballots to residential and commercial property owners asking if they wanted to pay an extra tax for more services.

If approved, property owners will pay assessments — collected along with the property tax — that are based on a number of factors, including type of property, location of property, and number of feet fronting the street. A single-family home on a residential street with 50 feet of frontage, for example, would pay $54.64 per year. A condo owner might pay $29.44, and the owner of a ten-unit apartment building on a residential street with 75 feet of frontage would pay $233.26. For commercial property owners, average payment would be $1245.

In all, the engineer’s report estimates that assessments would amount to $470,193 the first year. After that, assessments would increase in accordance with a cost of living index plus 3 percent. Of the $470,193, North Park Main Street would receive more than $65,000 per year to manage the overlay district.

The city council will consider the proposal at a July 12 hearing, at which time the ballots will be counted.

“The clean and safe overlay district will provide valuable daily cleaning, security patrol, and economic development services to commercial property owners and business tenants in North Park,” writes Studebaker.

“With the current state of low-quality maintenance in North Park, it has become increasingly difficult to recruit daytime tenants when neighboring communities provide a dramatically higher level of service to the business corridors.”

But while North Park Main Street staff and Todd Gloria, the community’s councilmember, feel a new assessment is the solution to North Park’s problems, dozens of residential property owners oppose the idea. They object to paying a tax that will benefit and promote businesses when the patrons of those businesses, especially the bars, litter the streets, create late-night disturbances, and take all the parking places in front of the homes. Residents accuse North Park Main Street and Gloria of promoting the clean and safe district in order to pay for their own projects, such as maintaining the Ray Street Art and Cultural District and the Boundary Street Gateway. And they claim they have been left out of the process.

The process included the ballot mailing, in which a “Proponent Statement,” written by North Park Main Street, was available for voters to read. On the reverse side of the statement, voters saw, “No opponent statement was received.”

“There was no formal request for opposition statements,” says Brandon Cohen. “I take that back. There was an opportunity to submit the opposition statement at the city council meeting in which they approved the balloting. However, no one knew of that meeting because the only public notice given of the city council meeting was on Todd Gloria’s weblog.” The City had mailed residents a survey and a notice of a public-comment meeting. “The expectation would be that we would receive notice of a city council meeting regarding the balloting,” Cohen says. “This was conveniently glossed over so that they could get the balloting approved.”

Cohen lives in a corner home one block from University Avenue’s North Park sign. If the new district is approved, Cohen’s property tax bill will increase by 10 percent the first year. According to the engineer’s report, Cohen will pay $325.90.

One argument made for the new district has been the positive impact that a bustling North Park business center will have on residential property values. Cohen disagrees.

“A successful business district operates to the detriment of its immediate neighbors,” he writes in a June 30 email. “While the immediate neighbors of the business district benefit from successful eateries and shopping, we are negatively impacted by issues such as parking and loud bar patrons. I take offense that I am expected to shoulder the burden for services that primarily benefit the business district.

“While I want to be supportive of the business community and appreciate that they are contributing much [higher assessments] than residents, I believe this overlay district is a little piggy bank to get all of the business district’s pet projects up and running. Unfortunately, the community wasn’t given a chance to critique the services to be offered. And who was the organizer and primary pusher of the [maintenance assessment district]? North Park Main Street, of course.”

The residents are also suspicious of the high number of residential properties included within the clean and safe district. They fear that little of the money will be spent on the residential streets. They also worry that if the district is approved, they will have little or no influence on decisions.

Rob Steppke, former chair of North Park’s community planning group and current chair of the existing maintenance assessment district’s advisory committee, lives a block from University on Arizona Street. If the new district is created, Steppke will be assessed $45.42 per year.

Comments

I find it amazing that no one has commented on this. That tells me a lot about the hopelessness of the citizens and property owners of San Diego, up against a relentlessly unscrupulous local government. Sanders and Goldstone are more than any of us can fend off with lawsuits and the truth.

North Park property owners: get used to funding the local business owners' needs. You'll pick up the tab for their promotion and security. You'll pay for cleaning and sweeping the sidewalks in front of their stores. You'll pay for plants in planters in front of their stores and for workers to water and maintain those, and for banners and ads promoting the influx of outsiders and for curbside benches and ash trays for business customers. You'll pay for administrative costs such as cell phones and insurance and computers and paper and toner and ink. And much, much more.

What you'll get in return is tons of propaganda, all of which you will pay for. Enjoy!

The tale continues as the Mad 2 is decided by ballots received not ballots mailed, so if only a few folks return their ballots and the majority of those ballots support the Mad2 then it become Law if the City Council agrees!

Upon affirmative findings at the public hearing, authorize the consideration of protests, order the formation of the North Park Clean and Safe Overlay MAD, approve the Assessment Engineer’s Report, confirm assessments, and order the improvements, maintenance, and/or services; adopt the annual budget for the North Park Clean and Safe Overlay MAD in Fiscal Year 2012; authorize the City Comptroller to establish an interest-bearing fund for the North Park Clean and Safe Overlay MAD; authorize the City Comptroller to appropriate and expend the North Park Clean and Safe Overlay MAD fund once established; authorize the City Comptroller to transfer $10,000 from the North Park Clean and Safe Overlay MAD fund to Fund 200063, North Park MAD in Fiscal Year 2012 for the purpose of repaying a portion of formation costs contingent upon successful formation of the North Park and Safe Overlay MAD; and authorize the City Comptroller to expend $12,906 from the General Fund in Fiscal Year 2012 for assessments levied to City-owned parcels.

NOTE: Ballot tabulation will be held on the 12th floor of the City Administration Building, Room B. First meeting was held on May 24, 2011, Item 332.

STAFF’S RECOMMENDATION:

Adopt the following resolution:

(R-2011-879)

Considering the protests, confirming the assessments, and ordering the improvements with respect to the North Park Clean and Safe Overlay Maintenance Assessment District.

STAFF SUPPORTING INFORMATION:

FISCAL CONSIDERATIONS:
If approved by property owners, approximately $470,193 will be assessed to the 2,480 property owners within the proposed North Park Clean and Safe Overlay MAD in Fiscal Year 2012. The City owns 14 assessable parcels, resulting in an annual General Fund impact of $12,906 if the district is approved. The proposed capital and maintenance budget for the proposed North Park Clean and Safe Overlay MAD is provided in the Assessment Engineer’s Report.

Consider this: most local businesses do not own the property in which they do business; they lease. Their landlord may be a local investment company or may be a bank or entity paid by a family trust in Arkansas or Utah or who-knows-where. Most out-of-area property owner entities will never vote on this issue. Along with the mandatory City vote of "Yes" (it's a local Code) for all City-owned properties, and the rigged, anti-democratic structure of the "weighted" vote, the passage of the assessment on property owners is a given.

If a local business does own the property it exists in, as does True North (I think), they will vote "yes." It makes perfect sense for that type of property owner+business owner to do what is necessary to obtain a larger pool of funds than they alone prefer to ante up, to secure, promote, and maintain their business. After all, the old days, when a business/property owner took responsibility for sweeping their own sidewalk and promoting their own business, to LOCALS ONLY, is over! Businesses such as True North need outsiders, and that means promotion. For the rest of the small, local-oriented business, the payment of the assessment, by them or their landlord, means cutting into the bottom line or raising of the rent. For the rest of us, it's the shaft.